


Imagine Me and You (I Do)

by myrtlewilson



Series: Geraskier Week 2020 [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geraskier Week 2020, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, M/M, Soft Jaskier | Dandelion, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22716274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlewilson/pseuds/myrtlewilson
Summary: Jaskier’s soul mark never appears, but it’s not a problem. Until it is.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Geraskier Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633645
Comments: 38
Kudos: 849





	Imagine Me and You (I Do)

**Author's Note:**

> First off, thank you all SO MUCH for your responses on my Fragile Things verse. You're all such wonderfully kind people and I have not given up on it -- just hit both a life and writers speed bump. So, what better way to try and shake out the creative juices than through participating in Geraskier Week 2020!

Jaskier’s soul mark never appears, but it’s not a problem.

At least, it wasn’t in the beginning. 

Many kids are late bloomers, his nursemaid tells him when he’s old enough to ask. Old enough to realize some kids have other things he doesn’t. There was no real rhyme or reason to when a mark appeared, so it stood that not being born with one, though somewhat uncommon, wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Don’t worry, Julian, dear,” she had told him, rubbing dirt from the dimple of his cheeks, “you’re still so young, and have so much life to life. Your person will appear to you. Just give them time.”

When you found them, she explained to him, your world would click into place: colors brighter, sounds fuller, tastes sweeter -- like a you had leapt from a world half-finished to a dream realized. It was wonderful. Life-changing. Something people could spend their whole life chasing, but never fully realize due to distance or missed connections.

But at least, with a name, you had a chance.

Without one...

Jaskier -- then, still Julian -- remembers rubbing at the skin of his left wrist, where the name of his soulmate would appear one day, and thinking  _ I hope they’re wonderful. I hope they’re nice _ . He doesn’t picture a body, or a face, but a feeling -- warmth, safety, security. Love. He keeps that thought for years after, even when the world starts to be not so nice to people like him. 

The people who don’t belong.

There’s a thought, as misguided as Jaskier might feel it is, that the gods made each and every person as a match -- two doughy bodies molded from one lump of celestial clay, those pieces were meant to find each other again. The names, engraved into your skin one morning, painless and looking like it’s always been there, would help you in your search to find that perfect other. Your missing half.

So, through that logic, it stands to reason that if you don’t have a name, your creation was a mistake. An abomination. It’s something Jaskier heard of but gives all of three seconds a thought to before realizing what utter horseshit the theory is. Poetic at face value but drivel when the thin layer of idealism is peeled back.

Because there’s nothing wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with the fact he doesn’t have a name. He loves and laughs and hungers and cries just like every other “normal” person. He has dreams and thoughts, ambitions and fears -- he has a purpose, not despite his lack of name but in spite of it. 

And on the nights when it’s lonely, he finds a body. And on the nights when the sorrow hits him so bad he feels like he’s capsized in it, he binds his wrist with a strip of leather until he can look at it again. Out of sight, out of mind.

This back and forth continues -- one moment confident in who he is, the next, brought to his knees by the overpowering thought of being condemned to eternal loneliness -- until Posada.

Until Geralt.

He meets the witcher at the tender age of eighteen after singing his heart out in some backwater tavern and trying not to take it personally when he’s pelted with stale bread.

“Three words or less, come on,” Jaskier goads, crowding the hulk of a man as if he’s not a third of the witcher’s body weight and two inches shorter in height, “give me a review. What did you think?”

“They don’t exist.” 

“What... doesn’t exist?”

“The creatures. In your songs.”

From there, it’s downhill. From there, Jaskier finds himself obsessed, utterly, with the man who he realizes is Geralt of Rivia: The Butcher of Blaviken -- no. The  _ White Wolf _ ; so much more than the horrid stories spread about him. Geralt is brash and crude and, yes, sometimes smells. He can’t hold a conversation to save his life, and when he does talk, it’s usually to say something uncouth or crack a joke that no one but he finds funny. In fact, he’s the most socially awkward man Jaskier ever had the misfortune of meeting -- all the sense of a petulant toddler trapped in a form carved by Melitele herself.

But he’s also so much more, Jaskier finds. Geralt is special, in the same vein a lump of coal can give way to a diamond with some polish and pressure. The witcher gives coins to beggars on the street, even when Jaskier knows their own rations are low and they need the funds just as badly. He doesn’t accept payment from needy families either, especially not when children are somehow involved in contracts. Outside of needing to hunt, he has a soft spot for animals, going out of his way to return fallen hatchlings to nests or leave nursing game alone, so that their own kits don’t starve.

If Jaskier were to ever have a soulmate, he finds himself wishing, hoping,  _ praying  _ that it’s Geralt. He would even settle for someone  _ like  _ the witcher, though he knows nothing would compare to the real thing.

But every day he checks his wrist, it’s just as bare as the day before. And while in the beginning, before Geralt, Jaskier could convince himself it was OK his mark never came and possibly never would, now he finds himself wondering: Why?

Was he not good enough? Was there something wrong with him? Did the lore have some truth to it and he should have never been born? Is he not  _ worthy _ of anyone? Of Geralt?

The witcher catches Jaskier thumbing at his wrist one night by the light of their meager fire. 

“You don’t have a mark,” he says, and Jaskier laughs in return. There’s no joy in it.

“You sound surprised.”

“I never noticed.”

“I never wanted you to.”

Jaskier chews on a rabbit’s leg, fresh caught by Geralt’s snare only hours earlier. They’d roasted the buns over the fire, one apiece, and had been in a comfortable silence until then. But now that Geralt knows, Jaskier feels like he’s being dissected for study; like Geralt is a horrible child with a piece of glass and he’s a mere ant being burnt by the sun’s magnified rays.

He can’t stand the stew-thick silence, so he continues: “Well?” 

“Well what?” Geralt’s close enough to see his wrist, which means he’s close enough to read the turbulence of emotions that flit across Jaskier’s face. But just because he can see it doesn’t mean he can understand it.

“Not going to make a comment?” 

Geralt looks at him, like he’s truly seeing Jaskier for the first time.

“Honestly,” he says, slow, like the bard is a dullard, “do I seem like the type of person to say something?”

_ Toss a point to the witcher _ , Jaskier thinks, because it’s a fair bout of reasoning. He’d never known the man to make a social statement, big or small, so it would stand that Geralt would have no opinion on soul names, or the lack thereof.

But Jaskier is in a spirited mood now, the want to fight -- culminating from years of needing to defend himself and his worth, no matter to whom -- having risen to the surface.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know. Lots of people don’t ever get soul names. And even with them, they never even meet their other half. Tragic stuff, I suppose. But really -- I don’t get what’s the problem with it anyways, not having a name. It seems much worse to get a name and never find them, right? Like, if you never have a name, then you know you’re not missing out on anything that others--,”

“ _ Jaskier _ .”

He’s suddenly aware he’s been babbling so he stops, choosing to busy his mouth by tucking back into his rabbit and keeping his gaze to the earth. Geralt’s eyes are on him, he can feel it, but he’s not sure he wants to meet them. It’s not so much that he’s afraid of rejection, more that he’s afraid of the uncertainty of it all.

Because while he doesn’t expect Geralt to treat him differently or throw him out on his ass, he also doesn’t know what this means for them. Logically, the answer should be nothing, but there’s enough superstition out there surrounding Nameless folk like him that Jaskier just doesn’t know.

Geralt rumbles something, so low in his baritone that Jaskier has to ask him to repeat it.

“I said, I don’t have a name either.”

Jaskier isn’t sure why it shocks him, but it does. “You don’t?”

“It’s... more complicated, I guess,” Geralt shrugs, “but I don’t have a name now, which is all that matters, I suppose.”

“Is it rude to ask what you mean by ‘now’?”

“Yes.” 

Jaskier stares, silent, with wide and interested eyes until the witcher eventually relents.

“Before... before I became a witcher, I remember having a name on my wrist. I was young. Couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.” He took a breath. “But after the Trials and the extra mutagen testing -- I don’t know when it happened, maybe the same time my hair changed, but I woke up one morning and my name was gone. Like it had never even been there.

“It’s been so long now, I don’t even remember what it was. Don’t even remember how many or what letters there were.”

Jaskier keeps on staring, his eyes telling Geralt to continue in a way his voice can’t manage right now. Because he’s never heard of such a thing in his life; the absolute tragedy of knowing there’s someone out there for you but not knowing who. At least as a Nameless, Jaskier had some peace of mind, no matter how lonely. But Geralt--

“Don’t pity me,” the witcher spits, like he can read Jaskier’s thoughts, “the last thing I need, or even deserve is pity.”

“But don’t you ever wonder? About who your person is or what they’re doing?”

“No.” There’s a finality in his tone, which Jaskier takes to mean that Geralt had spent countless hours dwelling on the subject. He knows this because it’s the same tone he takes whenever being Nameless is somehow brought up.

Geralt speaks again: “It’s better this way.”

“But--,”

“At least now, someone doesn’t need to worry about being bound to a beast.”

The statement hits Jaskier like an open-palm slap to the mouth.

“You think yourself so low?” He says, before he can stop himself. “You really believe --,”

“Too high, is more like it.”

“ _ Enough _ .”

Jaskier’s voice is sharp and commanding, in a way he never was and didn’t think he could be. Apparently, neither did Geralt, for he eyed the bard like a cornered wolf. Like his namesake.

“I won’t have you talk about yourself like that,” Jaskier says, voice small but fierce, “you selfless, caring, wonderful fool.”

Geralt shakes his head. “You’re the only one who thinks so.”

“Then everyone else is an idiot --  _ idiots _ \-- blinded by prejudice and ignorance if they can’t see how wonderful you are. But I know you, Geralt. I know who you can be and what you choose to do, when you think no one’s looking.” He flicks the rabbit into the fire, when there’s nothing left to pick from its bones. “I know you because... because I  _ love  _ you. 

"I’d love you blind and I’d love you deaf. I’d love you years and decades from now, no matter what you say or do. I’d love you, even if somehow I’d woken up one day and forgotten you, forgotten all the adventures we’ve had. Because I don’t need a name to tell me that. I don’t need a name to know you’re incredible, to know you’re…,”

He doesn’t have a word, or the words, to describe Geralt. Because when he thinks of the witcher, he doesn’t just see Geralt, but the emotions and thoughts and feelings which make up the other man. Jaskier sees what he dreamt of as a child: family, warmth, safety.

Jaskier might not have pictured Geralt as a child when he thought of soulmates, but Geralt is who came to him in the end. Geralt is the one who stole his heart, his mind, his soul and had the audacity to look thunderstruck now in the civil twilight, as if Jaskier had just blasphemed the witcher’s family and name.

“You--,” Geralt starts, then stops, clears his throat to try again, then fails. He looks helpless, more so than Jaskier had ever seen him before, and shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe,” he starts, voice so quiet it’s almost carried away with the wind, “maybe we could be together, you and I. Our lack of names could  _ be  _ our names. And we’ll know it’s real, because we chose each other... you know?”

Jaskier feels his eyes prickle with the hot stab of embarrassed tears when Geralt doesn’t say anything in return. Not that he should have expected to; while he knows the thought that witchers don’t have feelings is a myth, he also knows that Geralt isn’t the most forthcoming when emotions are brought into the mix.

Why would Jaskier be any different? 

He bids Geralt good night and goes for his bedroll, the witcher too transfixed by something in the now dying embers to even move.

Perhaps, in the morning, they can write it off as a dream. A shared delusion. An awful mistake.

Jaskier removes his doublet and balls it under his head as a pillow. It’s warm enough in the summer air that he doesn’t need a blanket, but for want of covering his head so as to cry in peace, Jaskiers wishes he had one anyways. 

He thinks of all the stories about Nameless he’s heard from over the years: that they’re loveless, they’re mistakes, they’re doomed to live alone and die just as well. He thinks of how he’s spent the last fifteen years tailing Geralt, wishing for something, but getting what he was always told about in the end.

Jaskier’s almost asleep when the crunch of dirt near his head, boots on soft loam, makes him stir. He’s not scared though. He’d recognize that weight in the dark. He knows Geralt’s footfall by sound alone.

A heavy weight settles beside him, close enough to touch but restrained so that it isn’t.

Still pretending to be asleep, Jaskier evens out his breath though he knows the witcher can no doubt sense he’s awake.

“I always thought it was for the best, that witchers had no name,” Geralt’s voice is like the familiar rumble of a thunderstorm off on the horizon, “it meant that no one would be bound to us. Forced to be with us,” a sigh, “but I never thought that someone... that someone could  _ want _ …,”

And Jaskier can stay quiet for no longer: “For as long as you’ll have me, I’ll want you.”

Geralt moves his arm then, a tree trunk of a thing, across Jaskier’s waist, pulling them tight together. And like a lid on a jar, a worn boot on a rider’s foot -- he fits into Geralt’s hold, and Geralt’s nose fits into the knob of Jaskier’s spine.

“For as long as you’ll stay,” he whispers back, “I will keep you. Treasure you.”

Jaskier grabs for the witcher’s hand nearest to him, pressing chapped-lip kisses into weather worn knuckles like a promise. Geralt kisses him back, on every dot of the bones in Jaskier’s spine he can reach, in a way that’s both soft and strong. 

They’re not soulmates, and it’s not destiny, but together, they’re something like it. Something close. 

Maybe even something better.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Tumblr @[myrtlewilson](https://myrtlewilson.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
